André Previn, Oscar-Winning Composer, Dies at 89

Previn at work with an orchestra, April 30th 1975.By Don Smith/Radio Times/Getty.

André Previn, the legendary composer who created or adapted Oscar-winning scores for films including My Fair Lady,Gigi, and Porgy and Bess, has died. He was 89 years old. His management company, IMG Artists, confirmed his death; according to his manager, Linda Petrikova, the composer died Thursday morning in his Manhattan home after a short illness.

Over the course of his career, Previn became known as a prolific artist who played numerous instruments, composed dozens of film scores, led numerous orchestras and, subsequently, became flush with accolades. He was nominated for 13 Oscars, ultimately winning four (his first nod came in 1951; his last in 1974); he won 10 Grammy Awards and a lifetime-achievement award; and was knighted in 1996 by Queen Elizabeth II. Among his best-remembered work is the sweeping score for My Fair Lady, George Cukor’s elegant 1964 film starring Audrey Hepburn as a flower girl who transforms into a high-society figure, which Previn adapted from the original Broadway show by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe. “I don’t care where I am—I compose,” he said in a 2008 interview about his craft and his prolific output.

Previn, born in 1929, in Berlin, began his career doing arrangements for a radio show in Los Angeles, which led to a job scoring films for MGM in 1946. For the next few decades, Previn made a name for himself by landing high-profile work and racking up awards and nominations—but then he changed gears, leaving the studio for a chance to focus on classical music. “At MGM, you knew you were going to be working next year, you knew you were going to get paid,” he told The Guardian in 2008. “But I was too ambitious musically to settle for it. And I wanted to gamble with whatever talent I might have had.”

Previn made the rounds, starting with the Houston Symphony Orchestra, then moving to the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the London Symphony Orchestra, among others. “Pierre Monteux used to say to me that it is very simple, in a position of authority, to make an orchestra play,” Previn once said, referencing the French conductor who mentored him early in his career. “But much harder to make them want to play. I have never forgotten that.”

Previn was married several times over the course of his life, often to women with major careers of their own. His second marriage, in 1959, was to Dory Langan, an artist in her own right who collaborated with Previn on numerous film scores. He shares two Oscar nominations with her. The marriage broke off after Langan discovered Previn was having an affair with the actress Mia Farrow. Previn and Farrow would later marry themselves and have three biological children together, as well as adopt two children from Vietnam, and one from South Korea, Soon-Yi. After Previn and Farrow’s divorce, Soon-Yi would go on to marry the filmmaker Woody Allen, Farrow’s own former partner. Previn summed up his relationship with Soon-Yi in a 2013 Vanity Fair interview: “She does not exist.”

Professionally, Previn remained restless and continued to compose well into his later years. In a 2015 interview, he shared that he never felt particularly precious about his work. “I love writing and I’m very serious about it, but when it’s over, it’s over,” he said. “It’s not for the ages. I can’t visualize anybody doing my pieces 50 years from now. I’m just glad if they do them Wednesday.”